Bullying

LIFE KI-DO: STRONGER THAN BULLYING

Life Ki-do means living from your inner strength and spirit and honoring the same in others. When you are connected to this inner strength and spirit, you have a sense of peace with who you are as a person. When you can be at peace with yourself and you can also honor others for who they are, there is genuinely no interest in bullying. Thus you are Stronger than Bullying.

Unfortunately, children in our society today are encouraged to live in the exact opposite way. Under the tremendous pressure and influence of peers and media, kids are bombarded more than ever with how they should look, how they should act, and who they should be. Instead of looking to themselves for self-worth and confidence, children are conditioned to look outside of themselves for validation and their sense of self.

The consequence is that how children feel about themselves is based either on what others think of them or whether they think they are better or worse in comparison to someone else. When children don’t know how to deal with not feeling good enough and they become overwhelmed with self-negativity, they look for ways to alleviate their pain. Too often children will try to feel better about themselves by putting someone else down and thus begins the endless cycle of bullying. It’s a perfect breeding ground for what we call a Culture of Conflict where relationships and interactions are based on comparing and competing.

So to make any attempt at addressing the bullying crisis, we feel it’s critical to address the core of the issue by helping kids develop a strong sense of self from the inside out while learning to connect and care for others. Our hope is to create a Culture of Connection based on compassion and care where children can see others as fellow human beings instead of people to be in conflict with.

Our Life Ki-do Stronger than Bullying program uses our Tools for Life system to help children develop true self-love and respect as well as empathy, compassion and care for others. The program is broken into four sections – all of which we think are crucial to healing the bullying issue:

1. Overcoming Self-Bullying – This is one of the most overlooked areas of bullying, yet almost all children admit to self-directed negative thoughts, harsh judgments and damaging comparisons to others.

2. Connecting & Caring for Others – Because most children are so consumed with comparing and competing, they aren’t in the practice of seeing someone else’s perspective. If they aren’t really connecting with the needs and concerns of others, the disconnect leads to a lack of empathy which then can easily progress to bullying.

3. Being a Helpful Bystander – Children innately want to help when they see others being bullied but they are often afraid or not sure what to do.